PETER CHENEY
Globe and Mail Update
Published Wednesday, Sep. 07, 2011 1:34PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 07, 2011 2:21PM EDT
I have questioned my own mental health a few times – like last week, when I decided to take a 1,400-kilometre car trip with a cat. Was I insane? The evidence said yes.
Just a few months ago, I wrote about my miserable experiences with cats in the car, and got responses from hundreds of people – most of them drivers with horror stories even worse than mine. One guy crashed when his cat got wedged under the brake pedal. Another driver finished a trip wearing an industrial gas mask after his cat repeatedly sprayed the back seat with urine. Then there was the woman who was so tormented by her cat’s howling that she released him from the car carrier, only to be clawed so badly that she needed stitches.
I knew their pain. My own cat travels had produced a long series of disasters, including a cat that got lost in Northern Ontario, and a hellish trip to the Deep South with two male cats that turned our Honda Civic into a rolling litter box. Then there was the time I got a claw in the eyeball.
Despite all this, I was ready to attempt another long drive with a cat. My wife and I would travel from Georgia to Toronto, with one night in a hotel. Yes, I am an idiot. But I had fallen in love with a cat – a small tuxedo kitten that closely resembled Tyrone, the cat my wife and I adopted last winter from a city animal shelter.
We found the kitten in the landing field at Lookout Mountain, Georgia, my favourite gliding site. He was living outdoors, a tiny black creature at the mercy of passing cars, dogs and coyotes. We decided to name him Junior and take him back to Canada.
